Stem Cell Therapy is a medical process in which stem cells are injected into the body in order to repair or reverse damaged tissue and regenerate new healthy tissue that will help to cure or at least alleviate a medical illness, and so is different to the practice of gene therapy.
Currently there are over 70 disorders that have been proven to be susceptible to stem cell therapy. These include: stroke, cerebral palsy, diabetes, autism, multiple sclerosis, cancer and heart disease. A number of diseases that were once believed to be incurable are now being treated with stem cell therapy and are responding well to the revolutionary methods; giving thousands of people a chance of life that they would not have had in the past.
What are stem cells?
Stem cells are a specific type of cell that we all have in our body. There are over 200 different cell types in the human body, each with its own purpose in keeping the body happy and healthy. A stem cell is the most basic of these cells – it is the cell from which every other cell in the body generates and matures. To make sense of this we can compare stem cells to Adam and Eve – the very foundation and beginning of an entire population. Stem cells are to our genetic make-up what Adam and Eve are to Man.
Stem cells are unspecialised cells – cells without a specific purpose – that have the ability to turn in to specialised cells – cells with a job to do – as and when the body requires this. Therefore, if our body is attacked by a specific disease or injury, stem cells will automatically respond by maturing into specific cells that can help to fight this problem – think of them as the body’s own personal mechanic.
Stem cell therapy in medical practice
Stem cell therapy is already widely used in medical practice; a common use is the transplantation of bone marrow in a leukaemia patient. Other uses include: treatment of other blood cancers such as lymphoma and multiple myeloma; transplantation of insulin-producing cells for the treatment of type 1 diabetes; bone and cartilage cell grafts in the treatment of severely broken bones – in this case stem cell therapy aids in rebuilding the joint; and umbilical cord blood stem cell transplants – scientists are still learning of the versatility of the umbilical cord in treating disease but it provides an endless number of possibilities in the future of stem cell therapy.
Stem cell therapy was born out of the recognition that a primary cause of serious disease such as Parkinson’s disease or strokes is cell degeneration. Stem cell therapy is intended to regenerate healthy, fully-functioning cells that will repair damaged tissue with the aim of curing or at least improving the symptoms of a disease. Curing such diseases as these is an area of little progress in medical science and so stem cell therapy provides a great hope for the future in terms of improving the lives of the many people struck down by them.
With the incredible progress already made in the understanding of stem cell therapy and with still ongoing discoveries of its potential we can be hopeful that one day stem cell therapy will be curing diseases that we once believed were simply incurable.
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